See I'd tell yow about muy accent but I'm not sure yowd listen cos I'm a Brummie and people think we is thick cos we tawk sloughly. Yam wrung though cos think of all the great brains to cum from here loik Cadbury and Tolkein and Ozzy Osbourne. Yow know as in, "Sharrronnnn". Anyway we is easy to understand compared to those yam yams from the Black Country and Dudley loik.

I've lived in the UK for eight years now, and I still fear the dreaded question 'So where are you from?', because I know my response will quickly be followed by another question 'Oh, why did you leave?!'. I have been through this script several hundred times now, and it does get rather tedious. Additionally, people hear me speak and suddenly think I care about Australia losing the ashes, Fosters beer and Kangaroos. I have to say though, the worse thing about having an Australian twang, is that people think its hilarious to repeat words you've just said in an exaggerated faux Aussie accent. It's really not that funny.

I was born in Winchester and had a Southern accent, nothing in particular. My father's job with the Forces meant we travelled quite a bit as children. The first time I encountered a different accent was in Scarborough - my accent did not fit and I was called Posh. So I changed my way of speaking and adopted the North Yorkshire accent and was accepted. (My mother hated me saying bath and path with flat vowels as opposed to baath and paath) Then after a few years, on to a Forces school where people dropped their regional accents to fit in, so everyone sounded quite similar. So, back with my Southern accent, I went to a Teacher Training College in Manchester, this time a Day College where mostly locals attended. Yet again, I was labelled Posh, yet again, I tried to change to fit in. Finally accepted by my last year! Then I got my first job in Hampshire and yes, began speaking in the accent of my home county, and I still do. I'm the same person inside, however I speak and that's how it should be. I now live in Somerset - but that's another story!

I worked at an open-air pool in N.E. London getting it ready for the summer season. One particularly fine day I strode in to find the that painters had begun their contract - one man with a young lad, both in their whites, and a ladder - and tossed them a warm and hearty “Good morning!” as I passed, only to be met by a stony silence and a complete absence of eye contact or any other form of civil human recognition – i.e. pretty much ignored to death.

But I knew immediately what the problem was.

Following morning, I reverted to old tribal type and dug out instead the standard all-purpose cliché of “Alright?” along with the standard Cockney London practice of excising all consonants so that it was closer to “Awe-eye?”, with the first syllable barely hinted at and a quick questioning upswing to polish off the end of the second.

“Awe-eye?” said I, striding past once again. Straight away this time I enjoyed beaming smiles as they both turned with confirmatory “Awe-eye!” in response.

I was born and raised in Manchester, though don't have a very strong accent. A friend of mine went on a film studies university open day, and the group present had to describe a film idea. One applicant described a tale about a Northern, but not "oppressively Northern", family - the main difference being the fact that they shop at Waitrose and don't have a strong accent like "normal people". She supposedly was a bit shocked when my friend opened his mouth to describe his piece. What is strange is the association of class (middle class apparently being normal) and accent. Strong accents in my experience are interpreted as the mark of the working class, which is a little bizarre. That said, I do tend to subconsciously alter the strength of my accent depending in social circumstances (weaker with Mancs, stronger with Southerners). Maybe the class association is more to do with Northernness than accent, though the accent seems to form a part of this external Northern identity.

I grew up in a town outside Aberdeen among kids from all over the UK whose parents had moved to the area to work in the oil and gas industry. Although from a local family, this resulted in my accent being mild Aberdonian.

When I've visited Glasgow, I've found a couple of times I'm accused of being posh or tight-fisted because I'm from Aberdeen.

In general, I find that most people find my accent difficult to place. I was once asked in Aberdeen if I was from London. In the USA, I usually get asked if I'm from Ireland and in the rest of the UK it's a mix of Edinburgh or Scottish, but no idea on where specifically. I do think that South of the Border a Scottish accent is perceived to be Glaswegian because they are heard more often in the media. On the rare occasion I'm asked if I'm Aberdonian, I'm amazed!

I've had interesting experiences locally, when I was a student I worked at the pub in my hometown one summer and I had to ramp up use of the local dialect Doric as I would've been laughed out of the pub by the regulars who would definitely have called me posh if I'd used my usual voice.

Until the BBC allows regional accents on serious TV programmes and until the RSC decides that it's okay to take a major role with a regional accent, there will always be prejudice. Why should you need to speak with a South East accent to read the news? Why should you need to speak with a South east (public school) accent to present Newsnight? (except for Scots accents - they are more acceptable because of Scotland's status as a separate nation, but Northern or Midlands ones are still not acceptable for serious presenters). The implication is that to be taken seriously you have to have a certain accent. It should be enough to be well-spoken. Overly polished accents can be bland and conceal emotion.

Even BBC breakfast presenters are all southern and privately educated (Bill Turnbull, for exampple, is an old Etonian). This looks even more absurd as they sit in sofas in the north of England. Northern accents are relegated to the One Show/DJs/weather forecasters.

Brought up in the North East of England and experienced in Chemical Engineering I found that my accent was a badge of credibility when I moved to London to work for a major contractor as an engineer. There were some problems with people understanding my accent and I found the need to alter the way I spoke to help them understand. People would also mimic something I said, which I found annoying and insulting. Because of this my conversations lost a little in spontaneity.

As I progressed I changed my speech and pronounciation just to be understood more easily.

There are certain words that most people will pick up on as different; after 12 years in the south it is beginning to grind. I am not going to drop my accent, it's part of who I am. I am fed up of people laughing at how I speak.

During the 90's, I worked for a small building firm that was half from Liverpool and half from Edinburgh. Almost always, wherever we worked in England, people would focus on the Scousers and deride them and make jokes about thievery and the old 'Calm down, calm down' catchphrase. People would always assume that being from Edinburgh made us posh.

When we did jobs in Scotland, the Scousers were treated more fondly than us and seen as cheeky chappies whilst we were seen as boring, stuck up Edinburgers, especially from anyone on the west coast.

I was born and raised in Cornwall, far from London and the home counties, yet whenever others heard me speak I was often mistaken for a south-easterner. My Cornish accent was so latent that within even my own family I was compared to Jack Whitehall and other iconically posh personas.

However, upon my arrival at university in the east, I was surprised by how many elements of my idiolect were noticeably different to those around me. Short vowels, wide mouth shapes and an unnervingly guttural pronunciation of just about any emphasised word caused me to stick out like a saw thumb in an environment full of London-centric accents. I felt, at times, ostracised due to the fact there were terms within my own vernacular that might as well have been foreign to those around me. This was true too for the slang of eastern accents, particularly east London. I'm still not entirely sure what 'bare' and 'peak' mean in the context they were used.

18 months later, the short vowels have been totally replaced with their longer cousins, I barely use words like 'dreckly' and 'right-on' anymore and the term 'rah' comes to mind anytime I open my mouth. Whether this is a product of cultural integration or simply a sub-conscious reconfiguration is beyond me, but I am absolutely sure that had I stayed in the South-West, or even relocated to an area where the dominant accent is not attached to the notion of 'proper English', I might have retained my south-western twang.

Needless to say, when I go home I am very much the bumbling black sheep of the family.

Witnessed a Homicide Detective Murder a Police officer in 1988 & I can only assume my strong British accent denied me correct access to the Legal system to make sworn testimony. I then was subjected to Australian Police trying to Murder me as a Eye Witness, suffering *severe spinal injuries etc & was Denied Doctor ordered Full medical disability pension & Access to Medical Treatment . Denied Compensation & had to flee Australia to Japan in 1995 after further repeated death threats. Sworn testimony contained on amazon.com title THE GOVERNOR GENERALS STAR CHAMBER .

Born in Lancashire and living in Yorkshire I'm very proud of my northern roots. However, not everyone agrees. I had to phone a customer living in the South of England in order to take a payment for an item she wanted shipping to her. Very well spoken, well off lady in an affluent area of The South. All was going well, I had her address, phone, number, card details etc fine, until I had to take the 3 digit CCV number for security from the back of her debit card. I heard her husband in the background mumbling something>

Lady: "My husband asks why you need that number"

Me: "Because you aren't here to enter your PIN into our machine I need that number for security reasons, otherwise I can't process your payment. It's exactly the same information you'd be asked online. I'm not writing this down, don't worry, I'm inputting it all straight into the card machine so you don't have to worry about the security of your details."

(Husband mumbles something in the background)

Lady: "What was that [husband's name?"

Husband: "No [wife's name] hang up!"

Lady: "Why darling? I want it posting and we won't be back there until Christmas"

Husband: "I don't like the sound of her. She sounds dodgy. I don't like the sound of her one little bit.Have you heard her voice? Hang up love, just hang up"

Lady (to me): "I've just remembered I already have one of those. I'm sorry. Goodbye"

Was it me or my accent? For my own dignity I'd like to think it was just the strong northern accent

Born in Salford I moved to Yorkshire about 6 or 7 years ago and had (surprisingly) little trouble with my accent until I got a job working in a shop owned by a lady who had grown up about 3 miles away from where I was born. I do have a tendency to call people 'love' or 'lovely' which most people see as a nice term of endearment and have no problem with. Upon hearing me say to a customer "Hello lovely, what can I get you?" I was told by the store owner this was entirely unacceptable as I reminded her of growing up in Salford which she hated and I must stop immediately as it was "dirty and common". Needless to say I didn;t stay there very long!

My family says my accent has become a lot more Yorkshire over the last few years; I'll take that as a compliment as I never really like having a nasally Salfordian accent.

Although I did learn the hard way very early on that to call someone "cock" on this side of the Pennines is an entirely different kettle of fish.. . :-S

I grew up being teased a lot during school (and a little in college) for speaking with a "posh" accent. I had lived in the south for the first 10 years of my life, and kept my accent when I moved up to Yorkshire. I was always assumed to be a "snob" with "rich parents", neither of which were true in the slightest.

Neither of us have a problem, when we're in the other ones home town, but when we go to other areas of the country, we can often tell that other people notice that we don't have a 'matching pair' of accents!

Didn't know I had any accent till I was 11 and went to grammar school. The teachers were vile, the English teacher made me read out loud so everyone could laugh. I stopped contributing to classes and the history teacher failed me because I was too quiet. University even worse..didn't attend much but still got a degree. Working has always been difficult there is constant discrimination but its much more subtle these days. A new doctor in my surgery had me thrown out as she thought I was an imposter. I was 50 at the time and had been a patient for 20 years but she had a picture in her head of what she thought I would be like and she took a violent exception to my accent. Its not an isolated incident, an American woman in New Zealand didn't believe I was English and was so agitated she was asked to leave a tour bus...and my accent isn't anything like as strong as it was.

I'm originally from Liverpool and have always had a Scouse accent, although nowadays it's had the edges knocked off and apparently I often speak with a slight Scottish accent when not talking to people from back home. When I moved to Edinburgh for university 14 years ago I lost count of the number of hubcap theft and car jacking jokes, and references to my supposed working class roots that people would make and judge me on based on their own preconceptions. Most of it was intended as good-natured banter but some of the things people have said to me over the years to do with my accent and where I am from wouldn't be acceptable if I were black or gay, but seemed to be acceptable comments to make to people from Liverpool!

Edinburgh University at that time was an odd place to be and very unrepresentative of Britain as a whole, as there were 40% of students from privately educated English backgrounds, 45% were Scottish students and a fair percentage of international students, which meant a comprehensive educated person from the North of England was something of a rarity, when in reality in the UK they are a much more sizeable minority. I'm not sure how much this is true now, as the university has made great strides to increase the number of students from working class backgrounds in it's cohort.

Ironically whilst my dad would class himself as working class, as a family we've definitely become middle class over the years. At the point where I moved to university my dad was driving a 4x4 and a convertible sports car (neither to be proud of environmentally) and we actually had a yacht on one of the lakes in the Lake District. This was something of a surprise to many of my friends when they found out, as they couldn't quite get the fact that people from the North of England with accents would also have money and lead lives of anything other than grinding poverty! Interestingly, no-one at Edinburgh university that I new ever made the same assumptions about folk from Scotland.

I've never consciously altered my accent, and I'm proud of where I'm from. As a Chartered Engineer having a broad accent has never hampered my career as far as I know, and when working on construction sites it has actually been an advantage. Certain staff on the ground will more willingly engage with someone like me as I sound less like 'management' even though often I actually am. I've often wondered if I'd chosen another career path such as law, or accountancy whether this would have affected me but I guess I'll never find out!